Criminal defense attorneys and bail bondsmen spend significant amounts of money annually in advertising. These service providers seek to be retained by incarcerated individuals and/or their families. Many advertising mediums are used by these service providers in an attempt to obtain criminal clients, including phone directories, radio and television commercials, billboards, bus-stop bench ads, and “jail mail” which is sent to the home of the incarcerated person. However, none of these advertising mediums are guaranteed to reach the individual detainee, or to have his or her undivided attention.
People who cannot make bail and remain incarcerated do not usually have access to billboard or bus stop bench advertisement. Similarly, incarcerated persons may not have the opportunity to see a television advertisement, or hear a radio advertisement while in custody. Assuming incarcerated persons have access to a phone directory containing advertisements, their attention may be divided between multiple advertisers, thereby diluting the value of each advertiser's investment. Therefore, there remains a need for an alternative advertising medium that can be more effectively targeted to incarcerated people and their families.
It is well known that penal facilities are largely filled with poor people. The families of these poor incarcerated persons are often poor also, and may have their phones prohibited (blocked) from receiving collect calls and/or disabled from making toll calls (e.g., “900” type calls). Incarcerated persons are almost exclusively limited to making collect calls. Thus, it can be expensive, if not impossible for an incarcerated person to call a family member. Further, incarcerated persons have limited opportunities to make phone calls due to restricted access to telephones. In addition, friends and family members cannot directly call an incarcerated person, as the incarcerated person does not have a phone in his or her individual cell. Therefore, there remains a need for an improved channel of communication between incarcerated persons and their families, so as to ease the financial and scheduling burdens normally placed on the families of incarcerated persons.